


Systems, Memories, and Nightmares

by kryptonianmenace



Series: Stephanie Brown, Third Robin [13]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Robin (Comics), Robin: Son of Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25709455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptonianmenace/pseuds/kryptonianmenace
Summary: Dying leads to nightmares, and Damian and Steph are both well aware of this. But they have a system.
Series: Stephanie Brown, Third Robin [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858975
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	Systems, Memories, and Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> An AU where Steph is the third Robin and the first Robin to die. When Steph was resurrected, she was resurrected and trained by the League of Assassins. Takes place after Damian's death.

Things are different when Damian is alive again.

It’s to be expected - as much as you grieve, life does move on, after all.

But from his family’s perspective, he’s not the first Robin back from the dead.

No, that title belongs to Stephanie Brown, the blonde enigma that everyone refused to talk about around him before he died. That he grew up seeing around the League. That he never got the chance to tell his family, “hey, I know her, she’s alive” before he joined her in the ranks of Robins dead in the line of duty.

She’s Batgirl now, Cassandra Cain having moved on to the title of Black Bat.

* * *

He’s still having nightmares from his death.

Most people would assume that Damian Wayne would be too prideful to admit he has nightmares, but he’s eleven and he’s already died and been resurrected. He’s mature enough to admit that that’s what they are.

Of course, he still does his best to hide them.

That doesn’t stop Stephanie from finding him every time.

* * *

It was like that in the League, too. Whenever his training was too much for him and stressed him to the point of night terrors, she’d inevitably find him before anyone else could. It was like she had a sense for it.

By the time she had come to the League, he had learned to hide his nightmares well enough, but she still found him every time. He never knew how, but she never held it against him.

* * *

They had a system. She would sit by him and let him regale her with stories he had been told of his father, the legendary Batman, and how he planned to make him proud. Stories of the greatness he had been tasked with from birth. She would struggle to verbalize what little memories she could scrounge up, most of them odd and lacking context.

On particularly bad nights, she would rub his back soothingly, as close as he allowed her to get.

* * *

Once he comes back from the dead, that system changes. She brings him hot chocolate and places Alfred the cat in his lap. She forces as many stories from her time as Spoiler and Robin as she can to the forefront of her memory to share, a distinct difference from her time with the League.

On particularly bad nights, he allows her to hug him.

* * *

He knows she has nightmares too, but he never asks. A part of him is afraid to. She has to deal with not only her death and resurrection, but also the Pit madness. He can’t imagine what her nightmares must be like. But every so often he finds her awake, drinking hot chocolate on her own. So he fetches Alfred the cat and the two keep her company until she goes back to bed.

* * *

The nightmares persist for the both of them, but they have a system, and it helps.

**Author's Note:**

> [Check out my tumblr!](https://haljordanisbatman.tumblr.com/)


End file.
